1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a multifunctional adaptor for converting a conventional chair into a multifunctional office/fitness chair.
2. Description of the Related Art
A national-wide survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revealed that the number of overweight individuals increases linearly during the past 20-years. Currently, 56% of the US population has overweight problems, 1 in 5 is obese, and 7.3% has overweight related diabetes. Since the anterior abdomen is not covered by bone or cartilage, it has the greatest tendency and capacity for fat accumulation and expansion. All or nearly all the fat accumulation starts at, and over 90% of the excessive fat are stored in, the abdomen region. Overly accumulated fat directly compresses the liver, diaphragm, and gastrointestinal tract; disturbs blood circulation; increases heart and lung workload; and has been implicated as the primary cause for heart, lung, kidney diseases, and related death. A follow-up study (1997-2006) of over 100,000 American men and women by the American Cancer Society showed that individuals with an increased waist line have a two-fold increase in the mortality rate over individuals with a normal waist line.
More and more studies have shown that physical exercise is one of the most effective ways to improve general health. In particular, sit-up has been found to be the most effective exercise for reducing fat in anterior abdomen. Unfortunately, with the protruded fat pad, it is difficult for overweight individuals to do sit-up exercise. Also, it is not easy for elders to do sit-up exercise due to weakened muscles. In addition, doing sit-up without the appropriate protection may cause back and neck injuries.
In a previous invention, U.S. Pat. No. 7,549,705, we have developed a specialized multifunctional office/fitness chair for assisting abdominal muscle exercise. The chair has a pivot capable of rotating chair backrest up to about 90 degrees away from the seat surface, and allowing a user to adjust the backrest to various angles. Depending on the angles, the chair can be used as a regular chair, or a recliner, which is capable of assisting a user to do sit-up and other exercises, and effectively reduces the anterior abdomen fat. Scientific study has shown that 3-5 minute exercise with the multifunctional chair could burn an equivalent amount of calories that would have required 10-15 minute moderate speed running on a tread mill Noticeable waist line reductions are observed within two weeks on test volunteers using the multifunctional chair 5-7 minutes per day. However, as the multifunctional chair requires a special design with a unique structural configuration, the choices available to the users in chair comfort and preference are limited.
To improve the chair design and offer more functions, the present invention provides an adaptor which can be used to convert a conventional office chair into a multifunctional office/fitness chair. The converted multifunctional chair not only retains all the exercising functions of the previous multifunctional chair, but also allows the user to select and gain additional preferred chair design features, such as the choice of the construction materials, adjustable chair heights, 360 degree swivel around a chair seat post, and rollers for easy relocation, etc.